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Monday, March 18, 2013

COOKIES AND BONBONSis very-excited to give YOU the opportunity to WIN a $200.00 Diapers.com Gift Card!

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Diapers are a necessity with a newborn child and they are expensive. I wish I had known about this kind of opportunity when my girls were little. Enter for your chance to win this $200 gift card. Blog with Mom and Adventures of 8 have teamed up with a wonderful group of Bloggers to offer you a chance to WIN a $200.00 Diapers.com gift card from BellyHood.com in an !

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**DISCLOSURE** Cookies and BonBons is acting as an advertisement for the Sponsor and is not responsible for prize. Prize will be given by BellyHood.com. This event is brought to you by Blog with Mom and Adventures of 8 through Advertise with Bloggers! If you are interested in sponsoring an event like this, please contact Advertise with Bloggers.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Why Conscientious Parents Should Care About Safe Products and Full Disclosure of Ingredients There is so much build up in the media today aboutYour Family, Your Choice | Ecostore

This article made me think of the warning we heard a few years ago about being careful about which products we should believe are organic. The facts held within really made me cringe at the thought of what I might be exposing my family to. As a stay-at-home mom I was mortified to read that women who work from home are 50% more likely to suffer from poor air quality and die from cancer. Uh, what about our kids that are home with us???

Our food, air, health and beauty products and cleaning products are under assault by corporations penchant for using synthetic, and toxic ingredients just to make their products cheaper. They throw safety out the window in exchange for effectiveness.

Monday, March 4, 2013

My oldest daughter is homeschooled through a virtual school. Because of this she has the opportunity to take Spanish in elementary school. To complete the Elementary Spanish course there is required participation with tutors who are supposedly ALL native Spanish speakers. For the most part I have found that their pronunciation is spot on and their English at times is difficult to understand.

The other day one tutor almost made me blow my top. During the online live lesson lecture she kept reinforcing to the students that the Spanish vowel 'e' is pronounced as 'ay'. In all my years, and all the places I've visited where Spanish is spoken I have never heard the Spanish 'e' pronounced 'ay'.

From the time I was little I was taught, "A, E, I, O, U. El burro sabe mas que tu!" The equivalent pronunciations in English would be ah, eh, ee, oh, oo, respectively. I sent a message to the Spanish teachers, the principal, and home room teacher regarding my frustration with the situation. Not only because the vowel sounds were being taught incorrectly but because I responded immediately to the teacher, in Spanish, and she ignored the question/comment and continued saying it that way. From her accent I do not believe that she is a native Spanish speaker.

I received a message back from the lead Spanish teacher who assured me that they only ever teach the 'e' as an 'ay' sound in the phrase, "Como te llamas?" Pure BS. I was there, I heard the tutor, a former brick-and-mortar Spanish teacher, say that the Spanish 'e' was pronounced 'ay' as in say not once but three times all without any reference to the phrase, "Como te llamas?" Needless to say, I responded and let the lead teacher know exactly who it was and when I encountered the problem. You can't fix what you don't know about.

One comment in the response rubbed me the wrong way. "They have all successfully taught Spanish in brick-and-mortar schools." Successful by whose standard. They didn't get fired? The students went on to speak, write and read Spanish fluently? Just because my high school Spanish teacher kept her job doesn't mean that her pronunciation was impeccable, her teaching skills good or that she didn't have a horrendous accent. Nor does it mean that her students were able to speak and understand Spanish when she was done with them. I actually ended up having to tutor several of my classmates because they could not understand the teacher. Yet, she continues as a Spanish teacher, so I guess that makes her successful?

After doing some research I found two links that are very useful in learning how to pronounce the Spanish vowels properly and particularly the Spanish 'e' sound for which there is no direct English equivalent. For the Spanish letter 'e' first look at this thread from SpanishDict.com. The most popular answer was well written and gave a pretty decent explanation of the pronunciation of the Spanish 'e'. This link from the University from Iowa provides a fantastic demo of how each vowel is pronounced. When you open it look under 'vocoides' -> 'vocales' -> 'medias' to find the 'e'.

About Me

I'm a mom of two beautiful little girls, stay-at-home mom and blogger. I write about things that affect the everyday life of a stay-at-home parent or any parent for that matter such as parenting, relationships, discipline, the media, product reviews, giveaways, social media, food, cooking, gardening and anything else that might come my way. Please come visit my other blogs: We Are EarthformedCasa Guanajuato/The Frogtown House ReviewsLa Comida De Mi Vida/My Life In Food'Dig' The EarthEarthformed
I try to follow back to any reader who also has a blog. Leave a comment with your blog link (I have CommentLuv active on all my WP blogs) and I'll look you up.